Lost
by autumnrose2010
Summary: She didn't know who she was, where she had come from, or why she was where she was. As the memories gradually returned, she was forced to confront the horror of what had really happened to her.
1. Wandering

She wandered aimlessly, as if in a daze. She had no memory of who she was, where she had come from, why she was here. Her mind was a completely clean slate.

She was a young woman of perhaps nineteen or twenty, with blonde hair and blue eyes. She walked along a sidewalk in the downtown section of a small American city, past little stores and other places of business. People she passed looked at her curiously. A few held their noses and backed away in disgust. Uncomprehendingly, she stared back at them, wondering what it was about her that they found offensive.

Presently a policeman noticed her. He was young, in about his early twenties, with brown hair and eyes.

"Are you all right?" he asked her.

"I don't know." Her voice sounded stange to her, weak and hoarse.

"Do you know where you are?" She shook her head, and her eyes began to fill with tears.

"What's your name?"

"I don't remember." It was almost a whisper.

"Come with me," he told her. He drove her to a hospital, where she was weighed and her vital signs were taken.

"Your blood pressure is extremely low," a nurse told her.

A blood sample was taken, and the girl was told to sit in a chair and wait for the results. When they came back, the physician on duty looked at them in shock.

"Well, it's no wonder your blood pressure is so low! You're severely anemic. So much so that I frankly can't understand how you could be up and walking around. I'm admitting you immediately and putting you on a hemoglobin drip."

The girl was told to strip down to her underwear and put on a hospital gown. Although she could tell that the emergency room temperature was frigid, she felt strangely unaffected by it. She lay down on the examining table as she was told and wordlessly accepted the offered blanket, although she didn't really feel that she needed it. After some difficulty, a vein was finally found, and an IV was started.

A few feet away, a nurse wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Those really should be burned," she said in a voice that was nearly a whisper, indicating the little pile of clothes the girl had walked into the hospital wearing. "They smell like someone was _buried _in them."

"And not very recently either," another nurse agreed with a shudder.


	2. Beginning To Remember

_"No, Derek, no!" she screamed, frantically trying to reach the car keys, which he deftly held just out of her reach. "Let me drive! You've had too much to drink!"_

_"Nah, I only had a couple of beers. I can hold my liquor. You know that!"_

_"You've had more than that." She crossed her arms and stalked away from him a couple of paces. "Well, I'm not getting into that car with you."_

_"Guess you'll have to walk home then." He jangled the car keys in his hand triumphantly. "Looong way."_

_"So I'll get someone else to drive me home, then."_

_Derek laughed cruelly. "You don't even know any of those people, Lindsay. What are you gonna say? 'I'm scared to ride with my boyfriend cause he had a couple of beers.' They'll laugh right in your face." He guffawed._

_She didn't say anything. It was true; she didn't know any of the other guests, and most of them had drank heavily anyway._

_"Come, Cinderella. Your carriage awaits. Better hurry before it turns into a pumpkin. Or shall I tell your parents that you let another guy take you home?"_

_That did it. If Derek told her parents that she had left with another boy, she's never be allowed to go to another party. Feeling a great sense of trepidation, she opened the passenger's side door and got in the car._

* * *

><p><em>My name is Lindsay. <em>It came to her with a start. _But who was Derek? And why had she been with him? _She lifted an arm, the one that didn't have the IV in it. She was amazed at how emaciated it looked, and her skin was as dry as parchment.

"Hi there." She turned to see who had spoken. It was the policeman who had brought her to the hospital the previous day.

"I just wanted to come by and see how you were doing. You were pretty out of it yesterday."

"My name is Lindsay." There was wonder and awe in her voice, as if she had just discovered an amazing fact.

The policeman smiled a friendly smile. "Nice to meet you, Lindsay. My name is Gilbert Baker, but most people just call me Gil."

She smiled wanly. Gil seemed so nice, and he exuded a certain warmth, a personableness absent in all others she had encountered so far.

"Well, you look like you need your rest. I'll come back to see you again later."

"Thanks for helping me, Gil."

"Hey, it's my job." He grinned and waved good-bye to her.

* * *

><p>A little bit later, a nurse, accompanied by a student nurse, came to take her temperature and blood pressure. The student nurse looked vaguely familiar to Lindsay, although she couldn't imagine why.<p>

"I just remembered that my name's Lindsay."

"Lindsay." The nurse repeated the name. "Do you remember anything else about yourself?"

Lindsay shook her head.

"You know, I went to school with a blue-eyed blonde named Lindsay. Lindsay Kirton," the student nurse told the nurse later.

"Is that right?" The nurse raised her eyebrows with interest.

"Couldn't be her, though." The student nurse shook her head.

"Why not?"

"Lindsay Kirton's been dead for over two years. She was killed in a car crash coming back from a party with her boyfriend."


	3. Mike Sanders

_She had to get away from the fire. _Every time she tried to inhale, the hot air burned her lungs and sent her into coughing spasms. Frantically she felt around for a doorknob, overwhelmed with relief when her hand encountered one and found it unlocked. Twisting it and throwing open the door, she burst out of the house and just stood there for a moment inhaling fresh gulps of clean air.

* * *

><p><em>Mike Sanders. <em>He had been the bane of her existence ever since the beginning of high school. His hair had always looked as if he used vaseline as a gel, he picked his nose in public and wiped his hands on his clothes afterwards, and he thought that passing gas in public and putting thumbtacks on people's chairs were hilarious.

The first time she had seen him, she had been walking toward the school with an armload of books, and he had been on the top porch step with a group of rough-looking boys. He had sauntered over to her wearing a sardonic smile.

"Hey baby, how about a date?"

"Um...no thanks, I don't think so."

"Well, I think you're making a big mistake." With that he had walked away while the boys he had been with laughed rudely.

He never gave up. No matter how many times she politely declined his invitations, he always asked her out again the following weekend.

"I don't get it, Lindsay. Are you a dyke or something?" he asked her once.

"No!" Shocked at his insolence, she gave him an indignant glare.

In her senior year she started dating Derek.

"What's he got that I ain't got?" Mike asked.

"Me!" she replied.

* * *

><p>"Mike Sanders was there," Lindsay told Gil when he came to visit her the next day.<p>

"Mike Sanders was where? Who's Mike Sanders?" Gil was puzzled.

"A guy I used to know in high school. He was always bugging me to go out with him. He was in the house where the fire was."

"Why did the house catch fire? What were you doing in there with him?"

"I can't remember!" Lindsay cried.

"It's all right, Lindsay," Gil said soothingly, patting her shoulder.

* * *

><p>Gil remembered that there had indeed been a recent house fire in the area. A couple of his co-workers had investigated it, and a report had been written up about it. After he finished his beat, he went to the clerical department in the police station.<p>

"Hi Mary," he said to the middle-aged clerk on duty.

"Hi Gil. What's up?"

"Just want to check something really quick." It didn't take him long to find the report, and he poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down to read it.

According to the report, the single fatality in the fire had indeed been a man named Mike Sanders. The puzzling thing was that there was no mention whatsoever of a fellow occupant of the house who had escaped the blaze. Had Lindsay just imagined that she had been there? He didn't think that Lindsay had lied about being there. What reason would she have had to do that?

Gil decided to interview the neighbors on either side of where the house had been and see if they could shed any light on the subject.


	4. Revelations

"He was a strange one," Maggie Spencer, Mike Sanders' elderly neighbor, told Gil. "Never said a word to anyone, not even an occasional hello. He went out with Roy Patterson's girl Sheila for a while. I hadn't seen her over there in a while so I guess they must of broke up. I'm sorry officer, but you see, I really didn't know him that well. Sad about the fire though."

"Thank you for talking to me, Mrs. Spencer. You were a lot of help," Gil told her with a smile.

* * *

><p>Lindsay had become a ward of the state and, upon her release from the hospital, had been sent to live in a halfway house for women with various mental disorders. Her dental records had been compared with those of young women who had been reported missing from all over the country, and so far, no match had been found. Gil still visited her every day, not out of any professional obligation, but because he was genuinely concerned about her welfare.<p>

"I really appreciate your coming to see me every day. I know you don't have to," Lindsay said to Gil one day.

"It's no problem at all, Lindsay. I enjoy spending time with you. I love the way your face always lights up every time I come to visit you."

Lindsay smiled and blushed furiously, and Gil laughed.

"Are they still treating you well here?" he asked.

"Oh, yes. Everyone is always so kind. And yet...it's so frustrating that I can't even remember my last name." Her eyes filled with tears. "I can remember silly little things that aren't really important, like that when I was six years old I had a rag doll named Betsy who had red hair, but as for the really important stuff, like what day my birthday is..." She shrugged in frustration and gave Gil a helpless look.

* * *

><p>"I thought he was such a nice guy at first," Sheila Patterson told Gil. "But then he turned all weird on me. Got involved in the occult and all that. Started talking about spells and incantations to do this or that. He just wasn't the same Mike anymore, and I couldn't stand to see the person he'd become. Finally, I told him that he would have to choose between his new hobby or me. He told me that if I wanted to leave he wouldn't beg me to stay, because within twenty-four hours he'd have a new girlfriend. He said that he had just found out about a spell that could bring a dead person back to life. I told him he was full of it. He said that there was this girl he had liked all through high school but that she would never go out with him. He said that she had died a couple of years ago, but that he was going to bring her back. He said that the time she had spent in the grave would have erased her memory, and that he knew that she would be so grateful to him for bringing her back to life that she would go with him now. What he said made me feel really scared. I told him not to mess with stuff like that, that it was dangerous. He laughed in my face, and I ran out of the house. That was the last time I ever saw him."<p>

"Did Mike tell you the girl's name?"

"Um...let me think. Oh yeah. It was Lindsay something, Lindsay Kirton I think."

* * *

><p>After careful consideration, Gil became convinced that there was one more dental record that needed to be compared with Lindsay's. As much as he tried telling himself that that would be a really crazy idea, he had a feeling about it that he just couldn't shake.Finally reaching a decision, Gil began his search. As the subject of the additional dental record had never been declared missing, the record itself was considerably more difficult to obtain than the others had been, but after much perserverance Gil was finally able to locate it. The wait for the result nearly drove him crazy, and when it was finally in he nodded grimly. Although he didn't want to admit it, a part of him had known all along what the findings would be.<p> 


	5. A Second Chance

Gil and Lindsay stood silently beside the gravediggers at Lindsay Kirton's grave. Gil held the court order for the exhumation in both hands.

"I"m not sure that it's a good idea for you to come along," Gil had told Lindsay before they had left for the cemetary.

"I have to see for myself," she had insisted. So here she was, torn by inner turmoil, yet knowing that she could not lay the matter to rest until she _knew._

They both watched as the first shovelfull of dirt was upturned. Moments later, they heard the sound of the shovels hitting the lid of the burial vault.

The piece of heavy machinery prepared to lift the cement lid. Lindsay watched as the vault lid swung up and clear of the grave, and the top of the casket became visible.

Lindsay's heart pounded madly, and she could scarcely breathe as the workers lifted the light pink casket from the vault and sat it beside the grave. As the workers slowly opened the lid, she wanted desperately to close her eyes but was unable to. When the lid was finally open, she took one look, then immediately turned away and began to retch violently.

* * *

><p>A few moments later, Lindsay felt a gentle hand on her shoulder and turned to look into Gil's gentle blue eyes, which were soft with compassion.<p>

"How can you stand to be around me?" she sobbed. "I'm a corpse! A dirty, filthy, stinky, rotten corpse!"

"Lindsay." Gil shook his head as he patted her shoulder and looked into her tormented eyes. "There's nothing dirty, filthy, stinky, or rotten about you at all. You're a lovely young woman who's just as alive as I am. A corpse can't eat, talk, cry, or laugh. I've seen you do all of those things, and much more."

"How do you explain _that, _then?" Lindsay gestured toward the open casket, which held nothing but several large rocks.

"Lindsay, I don't understand it any better than you do. But to me, it doesn't matter where you came from or what happened to you. All that matters is that you're alive now, and you have the same rights as any other living person, including the right to be loved."

"Who could ever love me?" Tears streamed down Lindsay's face as Gil put his arms around her and held her close.

"You're one of the most lovable people I've ever met, Lindsay." He smiled gently. "Think of it this way. You've been given a second chance, an opportunity to live your life all over again. How many people does that happen to?"

"Yeah, I guess you're right." Lindsay looked up at him with a weak smile. "But where will I go? What will I do?"

"You'll have plenty of time to figure all that out." Gil smiled and took her hand. "In the meantime, always remember that you have a friend who's more than happy to help you in any way possible."

Hand in hand, the two of them walked away from the open grave and toward whatever the future held.


End file.
